Union

In response to Dispatcher and Her Officer's comment on my last post I will update the situation and again break my rule (Seems to be becoming a habit for me).

I attended the meeting with my boss about my write-up bringing along the union president to watch my back during the nastiness that was soon to begin. The first question he ask about the write-up was "Is this a write-up because it's not in his personnel file at city hall" Her response was about how it wasn't a write-up just a signed paper that we had a verbal discussion. The rest of the meeting was her re-pounding on how I should be paying attention to our channel and not having Desert Agency's channel un-muted. My union president sat back and let her go. After finishing the discussion on my issue she then ask if she could bring some things up and stated two of which would be official write-ups.

I have now been written-up for "leaving my post without permission" and "delaying the response time of officers and failing to gather information." I will explain a bit on each but right now I'm looking at a disciplinary meeting and two days suspension with-out pay for one of the two. The second one about delaying response and gathering information I am guilty of. What dispatcher hasn't sent the officer to the wrong address by accident? Also what dispatcher hasn't forgotten to ask for the description of the person the officers are looking for? It just so happens that both of those hit me on the same call. Now the first one is getting it's own paragraph to explain the events that unfolded that night.

Our dispatch center is a small center and we keep a minimum of two dispatchers working at all times. This night there were three of us working due to it being a weekend. I received a call from Larger Agency about a 911 call they had received on a male in the desert that had been shot. The caller called on a cell phone which displayed the GPS coordinates of the caller's cell phone. Larger Agency gave me the coordinates and said they had their officers in the area looking for the injured male. I began an online search on the coordinates to see if it was within our jurisdiction and was unable to get a good location. I then remembered I had a handheld GPS that I keep in my car for emergencies. I retrieved my GPS and plugged in the coordinates to find that sure enough it was our baby and he was in our town. I then contacted the shift supervisor to notify them of the call and situation. I then ask the shift supervisor if he would be OK with me leaving the dispatch center with an officer to attempt to locate the male. Our officers don't have GPS systems or devices. He told me to clear it with my supervisor and I acknowledged. Before I could pick up the phone to call he told me that if there was an officer in the building to go with him. I understood this as a go ahead an go. I left with the officer to meet everyone else and try to find the male. We searched thoroughly to find him with no success. After I returned to the dispatch center I sent out the e-mail notification that goes to the admins' cell phones to notify them of the event with the ending reading to contact dispatch for more info. When the system was put in to send the e-mail I was under the understanding that we would no longer have to call people on the phone to notify them. My boss has written me up for attempting to save a man's life because I didn't call her and ask permission to leave the dispatch center. I was the only one on shift among dispatchers and officers that had experiance with a GPS device and the way the system works. I felt I would be more of an asset in the field on that incident than to try and describe any satalite photos of the area to the officers. We'll see how this disciplinary meeting goes I've got several people assisting me in writing a statement to read for my defense.

Will-Tone 10-7

Im Still Here

I'm dropping in to let everyone know I'm still here. Our IT department has cracked the whip on internet usage while at work and out of fear of my blog being discovered or questions brought up I have avoided the internet unless necessary. I now have to post from home which gets difficult.

I am going to break one of my rules of my blog today because it has been keeping in the back of my head and pestering me.

About 3 weeks ago I was written up for 3 things that are not policies in our dispatch center. Our radio screen is a touch screen with our police, fire/ems channels and channels for surrounding agencies in case fecal matter strikes the BIG fan. We had a call that came into us that was for a neighboring agency and we took information and transferred the caller to them. Knowing personally that "Desert Agency" didn't have anyone on shift at that time and someone would be getting called out I unmuted the channel for Desert Agency. I heard my father check on en route to the call. The call was a hysterical female screaming there was a male in front of her house with a gun. I heard Desert Agency dispatch the call and they did not include the information about the gun, the caller may have failed to mention this information. I then called Pops on his cell and gave him the extra info we had about the gun. I then went back to work with their channel unmuted. I was written up because I had that channel unmuted. I was told durning my training to listen to the other agencies that way to hear how they handle things and I am getting written up when my trainer still does that.

I was also written up because I argue with officers and don't get enough info prior to dispatching the call. The call in question that I didn't get enough info on was a call I never took just dispatched out. The call taker took the information and I'm getting disiplined for it. As far as arguing, I do not argue with them. I ask them questions to clarify what is going on since they are my eyes in the field.

Lets please note that when I was written up none of the calls or radio logs were listened to for verification that I did these things. Infact the complaint that I don't get enough info was one officer's word against mine. None of these issues had been mentioned to me prior to the write-up and I went through every policy we have and could not find any that would make these hold water. I have been in contact with my union about these and a meeting with my boss keeps getting bumped to different days due to "meetings".

I know what you've been going through Angie with the sleep issue of recent. I too have had this write up hanging over my head keeping me stressed, frustrated, pissed, angry and tired for the last 3 weeks. My only problem is that I've kicked myself off the caffiene and have been without for 2 months now.

Will-Tone 10-7

P.S.
If Kvegas is still out there please send me an invite to your new blog.

Curious

Just a quick question to those of you who read my blog.

Does anyone know what happened to kvegas?

This has been a question that I've ask myself while trolling everyone else's blogs for pieces of sanity. Was she discovered and forced to close down shop?

So here I am enjoying another night of boredom (wow the phone rang just as I typed that...creepy). So here I am enjoying a night of semi-boredom because officers are making more T-stops than I think they should and crap calls float in from the porcelain telephone. I've spent a lot of time thinking as I've been going through a tough time being in a small town with no friends left living here to visit with. (Side note: I love my co-workers tonight. Nothing can make you smile like hearing them say "I'm a peanut" very loudly.)

I have returned from competition and have to say we didn't do bad. I am very proud of our team. We were the smallest post there and while we didn't win any trophies I think we gave the others a good run for their money. We ate at Famous Dave's and one of our explorer's earned a new nickname because of what he ordered, The Texas Man Handler.

Will-Tone 10-7

So it's been a little while since I last posted and I am sorry for that. Once again it has been in part due to the bureaucracy around here and in honesty it's really starting to wear me thin (unfortunately not physically). I have added a couple blogs to my list of favorites, if anyone is interested in joining that growing list leave me a comment (I like them) and I'll check out your blog for adding to the list.


To touch a little into my personal life I am again single and have a new female friend who I am very close to. I wont go into much detail but she is adventurous and is not ready to get involved where she is tied down to one person and place. To quote a movie my friends and I could quote most of "Funny how they always want to be friends after they rip your heart out." (brownie points if you can name the movie).


In other stuff my explorers and I have been gearing up to go to a competition this weekend in Sin City. We trained for our "Active Shooter" scenario which made me think of the nightmare dispatch would be should that happen here. It's not everyday that you show up for training and the officer teaching the class says "Ok I want you all to shoot me in the head and put my lights out." The officer brought the simunitions guns and masks for us to work on shooting a hostage taker playing coward behind the hostage. After about 8 times doing that we moved into the school where we began the tactical movements (this is the stuff I live for). Hope we do really well as this is my last competition as an explorer I can attend. I will miss that I have to hand over my chevrons in October because I will be too old for the program.

It has been suggested to me that I should find myself a good hobby. I am currently thinking of a few to start but am limited in due to the number of days off per week I have but I guess it wouldn't be a hobby if it took more days than my work did. I'd like to pick up my guitar lessons again and get my motorcycle licence.
I currently have been playing a lot more online games with my friends. I have always been a big time video game player for as long as I can remember so if anyone has any hobbies for a 20 year old male feel free to shoot ideas at me. For now I'll be done.

Will Tone 10-7

I'm Back

So it's been a while since I last posted and I should probably post an update as to what has been going on.

Things have been going well for me on the social front, I have taken "Boo" out quite a bit and we have had a lot of fun. Her mom likes me and as she puts it "Atleast he has a job and besides, it could be worse." her family is awesome.

I have shyed away from posting the last while because of changes going on in our comms center. Our internet privilages are restricted and being monitored so we are to confine our internet use to our break and lunch periods only. Even now i'm hurrying to spit this out to get everything in that I want to cover.

I am on my second day back to graveyards and my body is hating me due to the lack of sleep. Last night I discovered cappachino and the great awakeness elixer that it is. I ended my shift and was physically pushed out of the comms room because I didn't want to go home and would not be able to sleep. I have not had one yet but I think an officer needs to get me one to stay in my good graces.

Will Tone 10-7

Great Weekend

Back to the grindstone after a great set of days off. Last Wednesday I worked up the courage to ask one of the corrections officers if it would be ok for me to take his oldest daugher out (I made sure his weapons were secured before hand.) and he said it would be fine. So the last two nights i've taken her out and we've had a blast. I regret that I am going back to weekend graveyards because we wont get to hang out as much due to her schedule.

As I just mentioned I will be going back to graveyards. I hate the sound of it right now because my body has just gotten used to waking up for days and i'm going to have to re-adjust to nights again. I may talk to my boss about seeing if I can stay. I am supposed to go back and another person from my night shift will be replacing me on days while the scheduled person is out on maturnity leave for his wife. My replacement doesn't want to change shifts due to having problems with the other person on the shift so maybe I can swing it for another while.

We have shift bids coming this Wednesday and I have one question to some of the other dispatchers. How long before your shift bids is the schedule posted for you to look at and decide? We have 4 days till we decide and the last we heard the schedule for bidding wasn't even created yet. A few of us have decided to pull together and refuse to bid until we've had atleast a week to decide. I hope we don't just get assigned shifts for not bidding.

Will Tone 10-7

So after a long nights rest I feel I am getting my mojo back. Maybe i'm getting over the problems from my relationship and moving on.

Another co-worker and I began talking about making our "Trunk-or-Treat" for halloween a themed event. After finding photos of the officers from Reno 911 and troopers from Super Troopers we began adding names of current officers to the photos for them to dress as. I got trooper Foster as a character
(far left). I hope the officers will play along with everything.

11:32
I am now burning my mouth with a buffalo snacker from KFC. I may need to tone the engine to come spray my mouth. My shift bid is coming up on the 15th so hopefully I can score a day shift so my body wont have to change it's sleep cycle too much.

Will Tone 10-7

Blah

So I seem to have lost my motivation to do just about anything. My trip went well but with a few unexpected events. Spaz and I have been together for about two and a half years and have agreed to go our separate ways. We've both tried our best to make the long-distance relationship work and have done a good job to say the least with very few snags. We did break-up for about 6 months and worked things out between us. During my trip we had some very deep talks bringing all the skeletons out of the closet and we realized that things weren't working. We are however staying friends and going to keep in touch.

I have began my week long transition to dayshift and it has not been kind to me or my mind. Each day has been a test and yesterday I found myself dozing off in front of my console because it has been so dead. Today will test me again because Sundays are always dead with the exeption of jail visitation that we handle the warrant checks during.

Will Tone 10-7

Tagged *Sigh*

So I have been tagged by disFUNctionalcity911. Lets take a dive into my soul and see what we can come up with.

The rules are as follows: Simply link to the person who tagged you (see above). SHARE SEVEN WEIRD things about yourself (see below). Tag SEVEN bloggers to do the same AND include a link to their blog. Let each person know that they have been tagged and finally post the rules on your blog (that would be this paragraph).

1.) I have an abnormally large gap between my big and index toes on each foot. Some people have said it looks like I'm missing a toe.

2.) I have a knack for finding bizzare and interesting things. I have a metallic "android" skull as a paperweight at work, an annoyatron *makes high pitched beeps at random intervals* (Officer Smith would have fun with that) I find strange articles online usually involving law enforcement

3.) I find social engineering very interesting. For more info check out the books The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion by Kevin Mitnick. I seem to have a gift of using some social engineering tricks for the good of all.

4.) I can understand drunk Canadians (Gotta love family reunions up there)

5.) I have tatoo ideas for "in memory" of my parents should anything ever happen to them while they are on the job. Most people think it would be strange or weird to have things planned ahead for such incidents but don't realise that each time they go to work I may not see them again. I came to terms with the fact that my parents could be taken from me at any time when I was very young(I'll talk more on this tatoo idea another time.)

6). I am 6'4" and scared of heights

7.) This isn't weird but, I would give anything I have for those I love even if I never see them again.

Ok so I didn't fix it when I got home but I'll get it now.
People I'm tagging.
1. 911 Dispatcher
2. Aza
3. 911 Half-Baked
4. Dark Nights
5. Officer Gary (This is getting hard to find 7 people)
6. Law & Disorder (Angie I'm gonna thump you)
7. 5150 Life (Ok it's over it's over it's over)

The .357, Juvenile Runaway and the Taxi Cab

It must be the time of year here. We now have had 2 elderly males commit suicide in the last month, both from handguns. Today's was a graphic scene (the squeamish should skip reading this paragraph because it will get detailed.) on the rear patio of the decease's house. Our deceased called his wife, who was golfing, and stated there was a family emergency at home and she needed to return. After telling his wife to come home he proceeded to call 911 and tell the my co-worker that there was a suicide at the residence and no one was in danger because it happened on the back patio and then hung up. My co-worker proceeded to call the number back while their partner got the officers/ems/fire on the way to the scene. There was no answer when they called the number back and one of the officers advised over the radio that "there was a loud bang" in the area about 3 minutes ago (this was prior to the call and arrival between the call back). The deceased had shot himself right to left in the side of the head with a .357 with the house phone sitting on the table next to him. I have seen my share of crime scene photos and walked through an accident scene to see my classmate's gray matter splattered on the roadway, but never have I seen the entrance wound bigger than the exit wound from a firearm. The deceased's gray matter had fallen out of the entrance wound and was laying on the ground to his right (he really lost his mind). He of course left a suicide note about how he was in debt and had taken a life insurance policy out on himself, it is unsure if he did it trying to better his wife with the extra money to pay the bills or if it was just to dodge the bills and leave it for someone else. A very selfish action no matter the planning in my opinion.

We like so many other departments have habitual runaways. Most cases it's a parent who wants the officers to raise their children and make them come home, in a few cases the juvenile has ran away to a friends in anallyrapeme city. The ones that piss the officers as well as dispatch off are the ones that are a mixture of the two. We currently have a juvenile who has ran away to a large city in our state and continues to call their parents. Their parents call every time and because they have watched too much CSI and such they think we can pin-point the location and swoop in with a helicopter and our ninjas of the night to pick her up and return her home. I think our runaways need to be tasered each time they run away just so they know the consequences of their actions.

Tonight we had a carjacking of epic proportions. How smart do you have to be to steal a taxi in a town that has exactly 2 taxi cabs total for the whole area? Someone was dumb enough to carjack a taxi and drive out on a dirt road toward the mountains (big party spot). The officers were not able to find the vehicle but im sure in the next couple days the vehicle will be found trashed somewhere in the desert. I hope the person who stole it is stranded 5-6 hours out in the desert.

**On a side note, and to make readers a little more familiar with me and my background, I am tired of people contacting my officers via cell phone to report things. I used to work for a security company that patrolled construction sites due to the high copper thefts in the area. I am guilty of contacting the officers but I stuck to a system for contacting them. If it was something suspicious happening or something that would require an officer, I called into dispatch to report it. If I had just spotted a vehicle out for a "stroke of midnight" at 0100-0300 in the morning I'd call an officer because they usually would get a good laugh out of the couple scrambling for clothes. Since I have left my ex-boss has had to come out of the office work and onto the sites and streets. This is fine with the exception that when he calls the officers we hear the radio traffic between them and have no idea what is going on, where at, how many and when. I sit in a dark room and am treated like a mushroom enough by admin thank you I don't need my officers doing it too.

Will Tone 10-7

Prime Suspect

Well I just got back from a break picking up some food from the only supermarket open at this time of night. I got back just in time to hear my partner take a call from the same supermarket for someone who has broken the screen on a slot machine. When I arrived at the store the attendant for the mini-casino was standing outside talking to some 19 year old girl who for all I know sold her dope. When I exited the store she was still talking to her friend. She called stating that sometime between the time she stepped out and when she returned to the UNATTENDED CASINO MACHINES she noticed the broken screen. Of course me not thinking before speaking on the radio advised the officer en route that I had just been at the store and had left 10-15 minutes before she called to report everything. My partner of course jokes with the officer asking if I need to be added to the suspect list. The officer didn't have any surveillance coverage of the suspect and the attendant is "dumb as a fence post". When the officer arrived at the station I of course jokingly put my hands behind my back waiting for him to cuff me and escort me to the jail. Just a little fun for my night.

Will Tone 10-7

Just Another Day

I have not wanted to use this blog to complain about my job at all because I love my job, given I may not love working with some people but I'm sure many will understand how that works. I have been on the night owl shift and am going to be moving to the early bird shift. I do not have a problem moving to a day shift with weekends off (I'm 20 years old and have things to do on weekends) but the reason I am moving is what I have a problem with. It seems there have been complaints about the "teamwork" between myself and my current partner so we are being separated for about 2 months. I will be going to day shift and after 3-4 weeks he will be going to day shift and I'll be back to the night owl team. We'll see how things go from there.

So tonight may turn into a running blog for the duration of my shift. I will attempt to keep a timestamp going if I add anything extra for the night. For right now I will just go over what has been happening over my days off and such.
Tonight one of our corrections officer's daughters is riding with our medical crew to see what it's like being an EMT. I told her she was morbid and twisted (arnt we all?). I pointed out to her that by hoping for calls and action she was hoping people have the worst day of their lives. Maybe I shouldn't have pointed that out but I know she only wants to help people. She just needs to know that if she's responding not to show up with a big smile on her face thinking "oh cool!".

I decided to change my hair style. Instead of my combed back hair with occasional spiked curls I took a page from a couple of our narcs and went with a faux hawk (Pictured above. My mother says it looks like a "cupie doll" Please note the pic is not of me.) quite a few people have commented on my hair with mixed responses. I think I'll keep it for a while.
Besides the schedule change and hair cut I got my eyes checked. I see GREAT! I'm reading the 20/15 line with each eye. The optometrist is going to check on contacts to correct my color blindness which I hope will help.
Today I registered my car and had quite a few questions for the DMV person about license plates and what "Not valid for highway use" means. I'm sure by the time I left he was pretty sick of talking to me.
Our police explorers have been getting geared up and training for an upcoming competition in Las Vegas during the month of June. Last night we trained with a SRT (Special Response Team) Officer for our "Active Shooter" section of the competition. For those who don't know our "Active Shooter" is a scenario with someone in a school currently firing shots, our job is to go directly to the threat and stop the threat from harming anyone/anyone else. It was a blast and I got a friend to think about testing for our department as a patrol officer. I now have someone to go workout with so I can prepare to test for patrol.
Good news for me, my vacation time and shift exchange was approved so this Sunday thru Thursday I will be in Pocatello, ID visiting my girlfriend which will be a nice change from some of the issues happening at work. Well For now that's all I got. Maybe I'll have some rants later.

Will Tone 10-7

My First Post

So here I sit waiting for my officers to arrest someone for possession of dope and I have decided to begin my first post. After reading quite a few blogs from other dispatchers and po-po's I've decided to start my own. I guess I should go into a little bit of my background.

I am 20 years old and have been dispatching for about the last 9-10 months. I love my job and the stresses it gives me. I have been actively involved in our Police Explorer program for the last 6 years and have loved every minute of it enough to become the explorer Sargent (our post is small enough Sargent is our highest rank). I have been a police officer's son for at least 20 years to the extent that I don't think there is anything short of injured children that will bother me because I have grown up viewing photos of crime scenes and autopsies in books as well as case photos.

I am hoping that some day this blog will change from a blog about dispatching to a blog about being an officer be it corrections or patrol.
*Side note: I just confirmed a warrant and extradition on a subject my dad has probably arrested before*

I must apologize that I am updating while working so I can get side tracked by what is going on around me. Dispatchers know how it is I'm sure. For now I think this will conclude my first post.

Will Tone 10-7